IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/gamebe/v63y2008i1p203-226.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why evolution does not always lead to an optimal signaling system

Author

Listed:
  • Pawlowitsch, Christina

Abstract

This paper gives a complete characterization of neutrally stable strategies for sender-receiver games in the style of Lewis, or Nowak and Krakauer [Lewis, D., 1969. Convention: A Philosophical Study. Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA; Nowak, M., Krakauer, D., 1999. The evolution of language. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 96, 8028-8033]. Due to the dynamic implications of neutral stability, the replicator dynamics of this model does not necessarily lead to the rise of an optimal signaling system, where every state of the world is bijectively linked to one signal and vice versa, but it can be trapped in suboptimum situations where two (or more) signals are used for the same event, or two (or more) events are associated with one and the same signal.

Suggested Citation

  • Pawlowitsch, Christina, 2008. "Why evolution does not always lead to an optimal signaling system," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 203-226, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:63:y:2008:i:1:p:203-226
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899-8256(07)00148-0
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bomze Immanuel M. & Weibull Jorgen W., 1995. "Does Neutral Stability Imply Lyapunov Stability?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 173-192, November.
    2. Aumann, Robert J. & Heifetz, Aviad, 2002. "Incomplete information," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, in: R.J. Aumann & S. Hart (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 43, pages 1665-1686, Elsevier.
    3. Ross Cressman, 2003. "Evolutionary Dynamics and Extensive Form Games," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262033054, April.
    4. Warneryd Karl, 1993. "Cheap Talk, Coordination, and Evolutionary Stability," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 532-546, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Penélope Hernández & Bernhard von Stengel, 2014. "Nash Codes for Noisy Channels," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 62(6), pages 1221-1235, December.
    2. Jason McKenzie Alexander & Brian Skyrms & Sandy Zabell, 2012. "Inventing New Signals," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 129-145, March.
    3. Seigo Uchida, 2019. "Efficiency and stability in sender-receiver games under the selection-mutation dynamics," Working Papers e132, Tokyo Center for Economic Research.
    4. Roland Mühlenbernd & Sławomir Wacewicz & Przemysław Żywiczyński, 2022. "The Evolution of Ambiguity in Sender—Receiver Signaling Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-19, February.
    5. K.J.M. De Jaegher & R. van Rooij, 2011. "Game-theoretic pragmatics under conflicting and common interests," Working Papers 11-25, Utrecht School of Economics.
    6. Josef Hofbauer & Simon M. Huttegger, 2015. "Selection-Mutation Dynamics of Signaling Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-30, January.
    7. Ross Cressman & William Sandholm & Christine Taylor, 2012. "Preface: Second DGAA Special Issue on Evolutionary Games," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 1-3, March.
    8. Sandholm, William H., 2015. "Population Games and Deterministic Evolutionary Dynamics," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    9. Seigo Uchida & Masakazu Fukuzumi, 2017. "The dynamical stability for an evolutionary language game under selection-mutation dynamics," Working Papers e115, Tokyo Center for Economic Research.
    10. Geoffrey Hodgson & Kainan Huang, 2012. "Evolutionary game theory and evolutionary economics: are they different species?," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 345-366, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christina Pawlowitsch, 2006. "Why evolution does not always lead to an optimal proto-language.An approach based on the replicator dynamics," Vienna Economics Papers 0604, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
    2. Banerjee, Abhijit & Weibull, Jorgen W., 2000. "Neutrally Stable Outcomes in Cheap-Talk Coordination Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 1-24, July.
    3. Norman, Thomas W.L., 2008. "Dynamically stable sets in infinite strategy spaces," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 610-627, March.
    4. Dharini Hingu & K. S. Mallikarjuna Rao & A. J. Shaiju, 2018. "Evolutionary Stability of Polymorphic Population States in Continuous Games," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 141-156, March.
    5. Aradhana Narang & A. J. Shaiju, 2019. "Evolutionary Stability of Polymorphic Profiles in Asymmetric Games," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 9(4), pages 1126-1142, December.
    6. Ozgur Aydogmus & Erkan Gürpinar, 2022. "Science, Technology and Institutional Change in Knowledge Production: An Evolutionary Game Theoretic Framework," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 1163-1188, December.
    7. Dinah Rosenberg & Eilon Solan & Nicolas Vieille, 2003. "The MaxMin value of stochastic games with imperfect monitoring," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 32(1), pages 133-150, December.
    8. Takuya Sekiguchi, 2023. "Fixation Probabilities of Strategies for Trimatrix Games and Their Applications to Triadic Conflict," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 1005-1033, September.
    9. Johannes Hörner & Stefano Lovo, 2009. "Belief-Free Equilibria in Games With Incomplete Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(2), pages 453-487, March.
    10. Patrick Kane & Kevin J S Zollman, 2015. "An Evolutionary Comparison of the Handicap Principle and Hybrid Equilibrium Theories of Signaling," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-14, September.
    11. Förster, Manuel & Riedel, Frank, 2016. "Distorted Voronoi languages," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 458, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    12. Vieille, Nicolas, 2002. "Stochastic games: Recent results," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, in: R.J. Aumann & S. Hart (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 48, pages 1833-1850, Elsevier.
    13. Norman, Thomas W.L., 2012. "Equilibrium selection and the dynamic evolution of preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 311-320.
    14. Shmuel Zamir, 2008. "Bayesian games: Games with incomplete information," Discussion Paper Series dp486, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    15. Jeffrey C. Ely & Juuso Välimäki, 2003. "Bad Reputation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 785-814.
    16. Zibo Xu, 2013. "The instability of backward induction in evolutionary dynamics," Discussion Paper Series dp633, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    17. Bezin, Emeline & Ponthière, Gregory, 2019. "The tragedy of the commons and socialization: Theory and policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    18. Adam Tauman Kalai & Ehud Kalai & Dov Samet, 2007. "Voluntary Commitments Lead to Efficiency," Discussion Papers 1444, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    19. Cressman, Ross & Hofbauer, Josef & Riedel, Frank, 2005. "Stability of the Replicator Equation for a Single-Species with a Multi-Dimensional Continuous Trait Space," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 12/2005, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    20. Poulsen, Anders, 2001. "Reciprocity, Materialism and Welfare: An Evolutionary Model," Working Papers 01-3, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:63:y:2008:i:1:p:203-226. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622836 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.